6 Things I Wish I Knew When I Started My Blog

This is a guest contribution from Will Nicholls.

It was a little over two years ago when I first went online and bought my blog’s domain name.

I wanted to announce it to the world and get started straight away, but instead I spent the next 6 months developing and filling the website with content so that I wasn’t launching on an empty stomach. I probably read the entirety of the ProBlogger website in that time, as well as other web development blogs, cramming in as much knowledge as I could.

My preparation was successful, starting my blog from the word go with 600 unique visitors per day (and sustaining those numbers).

Despite that, and even with a lot of in-depth research on marketing, the blogosphere and online business, there are a number of things I wish I knew when I finally took down my ‘Coming Soon’ page and opened for business.

Before You Begin

In this article I’m going to look at some of the things that I have learnt since, and tell you how they can help you grow your blog. All of the things I’m going to mention are what I’ve only implemented relatively recently. In fact, the combination of all these techniques tripled my traffic almost overnight.

1. Be the Breaker of News

This is something I’ve only recently started to do, and I’m really kicking myself for it.

My blog is in the photography niche, and when new products are released I will publish a post about it. They’re relatively quick and easy to write: some images, the press release, a little personal summary from yours truly and it’s ready to go. Then I just post it to my blog’s social media feeds, resulting in an instant spike in traffic. I just wish I’d started doing this sooner.

How can you stay ahead of the game? Well it’s pretty simple actually. You need to find out who already breaks news in your niche – for me these are the big technology blogs. I downloaded an RSS reader called RSS Bot, although there are many others available, such as Feedly. But what I really love about it is that is pushes notifications straight through to my Mac laptop when websites I follow publish posts. This means I’m always at the ready to publish news as it is broken. 

2. Use Snappy Social Metadata 

It’s really important that you include OpenGraph tags in the metadata of all your posts.

There are plugins that can help you do this, such as WPSSO, which allow you to determine how links look when they are shared on social media sites. You can change the titles, descriptions, images and more.

It makes posting online really customisable. I’ve started to alter the titles of my posts when they are shared on social media, so that they are different to what is displayed on my website. I usually add an interesting and enticing bit on the end.

The result? People are drawn to clicking on the link, whilst keeping it straight and to the point on the website. Plus, these changes work for anyone who shares the webpage on social media, not just yourself.

3. Provide Tweetable Quotes to Encourage Sharing

Having share bars on your website is all well and good, but people grow accustomed to them. They float around on the side, doing their own thing, and people are less inclined to use them.

When you look at opinion articles, you often see a block with an important quote within it. Now what if you made these tweetable?

By using a great app from CoSchedule called Click to Tweet, I’ve managed to see countless shares each day of articles which have these tweetable quotes present. It’s fantastic – it’s revolutionised the way my articles are shared. The best thing about it is the quotes BEG to be clicked: they entice Twitter users to your website.

The quotes are easy to include in your posts. You just activate the plugin and write a shortcode where you want the quote to appear. It’s that simple. This is something I really wish I had started doing from the beginning.

I think it is important not to go overboard with this plugin though. Not every article needs them, or is suitable for them. Instead, use these tweetable quotes on opinion or discussion articles. If every article has them then your readers will become blind to them. If they are only situated on the occasional article, they will surprise readers and grab their attention.

4. Don’t Be Afraid of a Full Screen Splash 

Getting email subscribers is very important – they’re the lifeblood of your blog. Social media websites come and go, but email is here for the long haul. If you haven’t already, make sure you start a weekly newsletter that sends a digest of your posts to your readers. But how to turn casual visitors into subscribers is another issue.

I’ve tried using pop-ups, prompting users to download an eBook in return for their email address. These work well, and I saw a definite increase in conversion.

However, as of the last few months I’ve installed a full screen splash using the OptinMonster* plugin. Conversions went through the roof. My original sidebar sign-up widget saw a 0.5% conversion, but the splash now sees 4.54% of website visitors signing up to my newsletter. That’s an 808% increase.

Using a full screen splash can be daunting. It almost certainly detracts from the content and we don’t want to annoy our readers. But I’ve only had three complaints about it out of over 20,000 impressions, and two of those were because the users hadn’t enabled cookies in their browsers and so the splash was showing every time they visited the website.

Don’t be afraid to try it out – you definitely won’t regret it.

5. Use Autoresponders to Continually Drive Traffic to Your Blog 

Autoresponders. You’ve heard it again and again from Darren and countless other guest contributors – so I’m going to add myself to that list: use autoresponders!

Once someone signs up to your mailing list, they are fresh and looking for more information. If they’re only receiving your ‘same old’ newsletter each week, then you’ll see your open rate drop. For me, my newsletter is opened by about 38% of my 7,000 subscribers.

My autoresponders are a different story. I used MailChimp* to set up a chain of six emails, with one being sent every month, that look at a different group of problems a photographer might be having. The first email a subscriber will see is the welcome email, introducing them to the website and preparing them for the ‘special editions’ of the newsletter they’re about to receive. I also include some links to articles to get them started, and this email sees a 70% open rate.

The following five emails see an average open rate of 43.4%, although it is the final email which sees an open rate of 35.5% that brings that average down. Why is that? The final email is just a survey sent to my readers asking what they’d like to see next, so naturally the subject line is less engaging.

You should make sure that you are linking to the correct articles, too. What do I mean by that? Well, you should be linking to articles that are the pillars of your blog. They themselves will link out to many other relevant posts, sending your brand new readers whizzing around your archives and filling your website stats with pageviews. This is a great way to ensure that new readers don’t miss the older, but still useful, posts that are deep in the depths of your blog.

6. Experiment with Advertising

Online marketing doesn’t have to be scary. It can be a bottomless pit for you to pour your money into if you don’t do your research, but take baby steps and you should soon see success.

I use Facebook advertising to promote different articles on my website, often asking a question or inviting users to comment on the post within the advert. This increases engagement and encourages users to share the post, meaning it ends up in even more people’s feeds (and that is organic, so it doesn’t cost any extra).

Having highly engaging adverts with targeted audiences on Facebook is allowing me to spend only $0.01 per engagement – and that’s with my adverts targeting the USA and UK. Only a few dollars every day spent on advertising keeps my posts in my reader’s feeds and drives traffic through to my website, which then converts into newsletter subscribers, and the rest is history.

In Conclusion

Every step that I’ve described above has made a significant difference in my website’s traffic in recent months.

I recommend that you give a few of them a try and see how they work for you. I’m over the moon, of course, after all that’s what it’s about for me. The more traffic I get on my website, the more subscribers I get and the more successful my website is.

I just wish I’d done it sooner.

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7 Huge Sites for Traffic That Marketers Don’t Take Advantage Of

Do you want to know why everybody focuses on SEO and social media marketing?

Because everyone wants traffic for their websites, and both of these sources are huge.

Google, YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all in the top 20 traffic sites in the world.

Whether you’re a plumber, SaaS marketer, or recipe blogger, you can find your target audience through one or both of these sources.

Or if you sell physical products, you likely sell them on the e-commerce giants such as Amazon and eBay—same concept really as you can sell virtually anything on them due to their size.

There’s nothing wrong with focusing on getting traffic from these well known sites.

However, it’s a shame that more marketers don’t realize that social media and SEO are just the surface of web traffic.

They are the obvious ones that every marketer tries to get traffic from, which leads to stiff competition.

But there are opportunities elsewhere if you know where to look.

There are so many other sites from which you can get traffic to your website that the majority of marketers never even take a second look at them unless one of them explodes.

Take Reddit, for example. I’ve written about how to effectively market on Reddit a while back.

Since then, I’ve seen more and more articles about marketing on Reddit as the site becomes more popular and marketers see others succeeding on it.

So, what sites in particular am I talking about here?

I’m going to give you seven specific examples of sites with tons of traffic that you can potentially drive back to your site.

Have you taken advantage of these 7 huge sites for traffic? If not, it’s time to do it now.

Then, I’m going to show you an easy way to find even more sites that are virtually untapped.

Sounds interesting? Read on… 

Site #1: IMDb

IMDb is the movie site.

It has insane levels of traffic, all focused on movies and TV.

The first step in deciding whether a site could be good to market on is to determine whether your audience uses it.

Since we’re not looking at the biggest sites (search engines and social media), only certain audiences will be found on each site.

If your audience isn’t on IMDb, I promise that they are on some other large sites.

Since IMDb has a very specific focus, it’s really only good if you sell products related to movies and TV.

But if you do, it could be an opportunity.

I say could be because you won’t be able to drive traffic from every site that your target audience uses back to yours.

You have to look for a way to drive that traffic back.

In this case, there is one chance, and it comes from the active forum community on IMDb:

You can tell from the frequency of posts that it’s really active, and that’s just one section of the forum.

Then, you’ll need to become a part of the community and find a way to give value—but do so in a way that requires members of the forum to click through to your website.

Here are 3 resources that will help you do just that if you’re not experienced with forum posting:

• How I Generated 1,861 Visitors from a Single Forum Post
• How to Build Traffic Through Forums
• The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post

Site #2: Etsy

Etsy is another up and comer that will eventually be saturated by marketers. But it’s not at that point yet.

If you sell any sort of high quality jewelry, crafts, home decor, or clothing, it’s a fantastic e-commerce marketplace.

Why compete against so many businesses on Amazon for customers looking for the cheapest option, when there is a ton of traffic comprised of people who care a lot about those things and will pay a fair price for them?

There are no tricks to increasing your sales on Etsy.

If you have a product that is actually great, people will see it, and you will make sales.

You can certainly use conversion rate optimization and copywriting tactics to sell more, but marketing isn’t tough when there isn’t much competition.

Site #3: BuzzFeed

No doubt you’ve heard of BuzzFeed, but have you ever considered it as a traffic source?

If you have a younger demographic in a social niche (like entertainment, home decor, food, etc.), it could be a great source.

BuzzFeed not only has a ton of traffic but also allows you to contribute your own content to it.

To start, create an account, click on the icon beside the arrow above, and click “new post.”

That’ll bring you to a standard text editor, and you can post whatever you’d like.

If that post gets some traction early on, BuzzFeed will actually help you by promoting it on the site.

Crafting the right kind of post isn’t easy, but if you do, you’ll get tens of thousands of views on your post.

Then, you can link from your post (when appropriate) back to your site.

Matthew Barby has created a great guide to getting on the front page of BuzzFeed. He was able to do so multiple times himself and drove a lot of traffic to his recipe site:

Site #4: Forbes

Forbes is a magazine site for all topics related to business.

And while it’s possible to be invited to contribute, you can also drive traffic back to your site with a much simpler method: comments.

Blog commenting back in the day used to be extremely popular. Eventually, people realized that it didn’t always produce results.

The main reason for that is because they commented on blogs that had barely any traffic to begin with.

Any post on the main page of Forbes will get tens of thousands of views. Even if a small portion of those people read your comment, that’s at least a few hundred eyeballs.

From there, a great comment can drive anywhere from 25-50% of that traffic back to your site.

That’s a decent use of your time, especially if you’re struggling with traffic.

Every Forbes post has the “comment on this story” option at the bottom of the last page:

According to their rules, you can have up to two links to other sites in the comments:

Really, you only need one.

The hard part is leaving a comment that will impress people enough to drive traffic back to your site. Here are some great resources that will show you how to do that:

• How I Generated $25,000 with 249 Comments
• How To Drive Targeted Traffic With Blog Commenting
• How To Write Great Blog Comments For Traffic and SEO Ranking

Site #5: Business Insider

Business Insider is another site similar to Forbes, with slightly different topics:

Even though it has a slightly higher Alexa rank, it still has an insane amount of traffic.

As an added bonus, you can add your website’s URL to your username as you leave comments:

Again, this is just blog commenting at its core, so use the same strategy as I showed you above with Forbes.

Site #6: Allrecipes

If you have a food blog, there are many opportunities to get creative and draw traffic back to your own site.

Although Allrecipes is a tough one, it’s still possible to make it work.

A standard recipe page looks like this at the top:

Then you see instructions, and then reviews.

If your review is really helpful, it will be seen by almost everyone who views the page.

Then, you could place a link at the end of the comment. It’d be easy to make a natural transition.

For example:

I’ve tried 10 other gumbo recipes, but none have turned out as good as this one.

It was so good that I adapted the recipe just for my gluten-free friends. They LOVED it!

Here’s how I changed the recipe to make it gluten-free: (link)

I’m sure you could make the comment more valuable—I’m just not a cooking expert.

The point is, look for ways to add value with your comment while naturally incorporating a link into it. It won’t even look like you’re trying to drive traffic to your site. It’ll look like you are just trying to help people.

That’s your goal with any link: make it useful.

Site #7: Quora

Quora is the 141st most popular website in the United States.

It’s a question and answer site that even I use. It has the same concept as Yahoo Answers, but the quality is much higher.

The site is continually getting more popular, and many (but not all) marketers have realized its potential.

The simple strategy is to leave really great answers to questions posted in the community.

Great answers will be upvoted to the top and seen by most people.

Then, include links in your answers as appropriate, and that will drive traffic wherever you’d like:

To get started, start typing a topic in the search bar. It will suggest a bunch of related topics, and when you see what you’re looking for, click it:

You can then follow that topic and answer questions that you feel you can do justice to.

There’s no trickery here: you have to provide value.

Yes, it’s a lot of work per answer, but the rewards can be big as well.

You can get millions of views on your answers over time if you stick with it:

While not all those reading your answer will end up visiting your site, even a small chunk is a significant number.

In addition, you will likely end up attracting additional business from people impressed with your answers. Even without the traffic, it’s worth it.

How to find as many of these low competition sites as you need

Maybe more than one of these sites are perfect for your marketing.

Maybe none are.

That’s the point of going to sites that are smaller than the Googles and Facebooks of the world—but large enough to be potential sources of traffic.

They don’t have every audience you might want, so I can’t give everybody specific sites to market on.

However, you can find plenty more that are right for you with a simple process that I’m about to show you.

This will work for everyone.

First, head over to Alexa, and browse sites by category.

By sorting by category rather than rank (which is what I did for the seven sites in this post), you ensure that you find sites relevant to your business.

From there, you have the option to choose a subcategory, or you can start with the broad sites.

Either method works, but be careful not to narrow down the sites too far and be left with those that don’t have much traffic.

While a site’s Alexa Rank isn’t perfect by any means, it does generally correspond to traffic levels.

Try to stick to sites with an Alexa Rank no higher than 20,000.

That still leaves you with a ton of options.

At this point, you’re staring at a list of domains.

You need to go to each of those sites individually and answer the same two questions I’ve been mentioning all along:

1. Does your audience visit this site?
2. Is there a way to get that traffic back to your site?

The second step is the hardest at first, but you’ll get more proficient at it as you go. In general, you want to look for things like:

• a forum
• comment section (that allows links)
• guest posts/editorials that you can submit
• a way to post your products directly (if the site is a store)

After you go through 100-200 sites, you’ll have a list of at least 5-10 sites you could effectively use as traffic sources.

The final thing to mention here is that when you’re marketing on a brand new site, you need to take the time to figure out an effective strategy.

For social media sites and search engines, the work has been done for you by marketing bloggers. For most of these new sites, you’ll have to do the work yourself.

Try to understand the tactics used on social media and search engines, and then apply those tactics to these new sites.

Even if you don’t get them perfectly at first, you should still have some success because of the low competition.

Conclusion

Search engines and social media giants are fantastic sources of traffic for almost all businesses.

But…they are hard to capitalize on.

The best marketers win big, while a large portion of marketers struggle.

Unless you’re already getting a great ROI on them, you’re probably better off finding new traffic sources that marketers in your industry haven’t saturated yet.

I’ve given you seven specific examples of these sources, but more importantly, I’ve given you a simple framework you can use to find more of them. They might just turn out to be perfect for your business.

If you have patience and persevere through the tough parts in the beginning while you figure out the best marketing strategy on these new sites, you’ll find that you can get much more traffic with less effort (and cost).

One last thing: If you try this out, I want to hear from you! Leave me a comment letting me know if you were able to identify any sites that could work for your marketing plan.

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21 Ideas on How to Promote Your Blog

Right now, content marketing is all the rage. Ask any online marketer or agency what they’re currently having the most success with and a majority of them will mention blogging. The growing importance of adding new content to your website on a regular basis has pushed a lot of companies to pour hours into creating amazing blog posts with the hopes of improving their SEO and attracting new leads.

However, there’s more to content marketing than just writing blog posts. You need to learn how to promote your blog to get it in front of the right people. Otherwise, all the hours you put into creating that mind-blowing piece of content will have been for nothing.

It’s time to stop the “publish and pray” approach. If you’ve been struggling to come up with ideas on how to promote your blog, here are 21 proven techniques that will put more eyes on your content:

1. Reach out to Sources You Mentioned in the Article

If you mentioned a blogger, online publication or influencer within your article, reach out to them and let them know. Most people are thrilled to be quoted within an article and will share it with their audience.

Don’t be afraid to ask for the share either. Just shoot out a brief email letting them know you mentioned them and that you would appreciate them sharing it with their audience.

This is also a great way to start making connections and meet bloggers in your industry without being pushy.

2. @Mention Sources When You Share

Another great place to reach out to people you mention within your blog posts is Twitter. Instead of just Tweeting the title of your post and a link, create unique Tweets that @mention sources you mentioned within your content. For instance, if your post links to an article you found on Sprout Social, create a Tweet including “@SproutSocial” when you share your post.

The accounts you @mention will receive a Twitter notification, and they may reply or Retweet you. At the very least, you’re grabbing their attention.

3. Share Your Post Multiple Times On Social Media

Tweeting a link to your post once and then forgetting about it has little to no effect unless you have hundreds of thousands of extremely engaged followers. Due to how quickly content moves on Twitter, you won’t be able to reach all of your followers, or even most of them with a single Tweet.

Your followers are online at different times throughout the day. In order to get the most reach possible, you need to Tweet multiple times. The easiest way to do this is to create multiple Tweets, then use a social media scheduling tool to assign them out for different times and days throughout the week. The same thing applies for other social networks as well.

4. Message Your LinkedIn Network

LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized social media channels for content promotion. And the companies that do share content on LinkedIn take the wrong approach. They simply share a link on their feed and move on.

A more effective approach is to use one of the most powerful features of LinkedIn, which is your network. When you create a new blog post, send a message to people in your network that you think would find it interesting.

Of course, this method is more effective with connections that you’re in touch with on a fairly regular basis. Messaging your connections once a year to tell them about your latest blog post makes you look like a spammer and it’s bad etiquette.

5. Contact People Who Have Shared Similar Content

Find people who have shared content similar to your new post and reach out to them. Finding posts that are in the same vein as yours is as simple as doing a Google search for similar topics or using a tool like BuzzSumo.

For instance, if you wrote a blog post called “10 Tips To Whiten Your Teeth,” you could Google “teeth whitening tips” to find posts that are similar to yours. Then plug that URL into Twitter to find Tweets containing that link.

Alternatively, you could do a search in BuzzSumo for the main topic of your post and see a list of articles that have been highly shared on social media. Then click on “View Sharers” to see people who have Tweeted a link to the article.

6. Contact People Who Have Linked to Similar Content

In addition to reaching out to people who have shared similar content, you should also reach out to sites that have linked to similar content.

You can use Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs or any other backlink checker of your choice to find the sites that link to a particular article.

Put together a list of these sites and send an email to them letting them know you’ve created an article similar to a piece of content they’ve linked to in the past. At the same time, your emails should be personalized for every site you’re contacting.

7. Email Influencers

Why handle all of the content promotion yourself? What if you could get other people with established followers to share your content for you? That’s what this tactic is all about.

Influencer outreach (or blogger outreach) is a three step process:

1. Find influencers in your industry.
2. Tell them about your new post.
3. Ask them to share it with their audience.

There’s a good chance you already know who some of the top influencers in your industry. If not, you can do a Google search to find popular blogs related to your field. A simple search like “industry blog” will bring up plenty of results.

Put together a list of influencers in your industry that you can reference back to whenever you want to do blogger outreach. Start building relationships now instead of waiting until you need something. That way influencers are already familiar with you before you ask them to share your post.

8. Use Audio on Your Blog Post

Podcasts have made a strong resurgence in the last two to three years. With hectic schedules, people are constantly on the move, so they prefer to consume their content by audio rather than reading through an entire blog post. In order to reach this audience, you can make an audio version of your blog posts.

You don’t just have to read your blog post aloud. Give your listeners a special experience by adding extra insight that’s not inside the original post. Another option is to invite guests to talk about the topic of your blog post. For example, if you created a blog post about the health benefits of sweet potatoes, you could interview a dietitian or health blogger about the same topic and have an entertaining discussion.

Once you have your audio recorded, you can upload it to Sound Cloud, Stitcher or iTunes as a podcast.

9. Turn Your Blog Post Into a Slide Deck

Another great way to repurpose your blog posts for extra promotion is to turn them into slide decks and share them on SlideShare or other presentation sites. Don’t take the lazy man’s approach and just copy and paste each paragraph onto a white slide. Re-work the content into a professional looking presentation. This technique works particularly well with list posts or “how to” articles because each slide can be a different tip or step in the process.

When you upload your slide deck, include a link back to your full article in the description section. You can even link to the article within the slide deck. This will help push new traffic to your site instead of having them just exit out the page once they’ve gone through all the slides.

10. Add Video to Your Blog Post

Just like some people prefer audio content to text, others prefer video. Making a video can expose your blog post to an entirely new audience of people looking for video-based content on your topic. Your video can be a short two-minute overview of the topics you discussed in the blog post. You could also just further talk about one of the main points mentioned in the article.

WPBeginner does an excellent job of turning its tutorial posts into videos, which allows the site to serve people who prefer to read through a guide as well as those who want a video walk-through.

11. Submit Your Site To StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a content discovery site. It suggests blog posts based on your interests. One of the ways StumbleUpon gets content to suggest is through people submitting URL’s. Here’s how to do it.

After creating your account, click on your profile image and select “Add a Page”

Then, fill out the information and click save.

12. Create A Pinnable Image And Pin Your Post

Sometimes Pinterest gets overlooked in the social media marketing conversation. However, it can be a powerful source of referral traffic for your blog. Murals Wallpaper used Pinterest marketing to get a 77% boost in new site traffic. If your audience is on Pinterest, you can achieve similar results.

In order to get a piece of the Pinterest pie, start by creating an image specifically to be shared on Pinterest instead of just uploading a picture from within your picture. Refer to oursocial media image size guide to find the latest Pin size. Here are some additional tips to get more eyes on your Pins.

13. Share Your Post In LinkedIn Groups

In addition to reaching out to your LinkedIn network, another great place to go is LinkedIn Groups when you’re looking how to promote your blog. LinkedIn Groups work well because you’re guaranteed to get your content in front of people who you know are interested in your industry or topic. The mistake that most businesses make with LinkedIn Groups is they don’t add value. They simply use it as a way to syndicate their latest blog posts. In other words, they spam.

The majority of your activity should be answering questions from other members and participating in discussions. Only share a blog post with your groups when it’s relevant, and be careful not to overshare. You want to be known for the value you bring to the group, not for being a spammer.

14. Share Your Post In Google+ Communities

Google+ isn’t usually the first site that comes to mind when businesses think of promoting their content. There has been a lot of confusion about what the benefits of the social network are and how to utilize it. However, after a lot of retooling, it looks like Google has decided to focus on the community aspect of Google+ rather than try to compete with sites like Facebook and Twitter.

There are several active communities to choose from in a variety of industries. You cansearch through the communities to find a few that are relevant to your business. However, Google+ Communities aren’t going to be effective for every business. The social network is particularly popular among techies, Android users and marketers. The best way to tell if Google+ will be a good fit for your business is to take a look around and see if your target market is there. If there are active communities for your industry, that’s a great sign.

Before posting links to your own website in a Google+ Community, make sure you read through the rules. Some communities don’t allow self-promotion so be respectful and follow the rules.

15. Comment On Other Blogs

Blog commenting gained a bad rap because of online marketers who were using them as a way to get mass backlinks to boost their search engine rankings. However, the benefits of blog comments go far beyond SEO. The comments section of popular blog posts can be a goldmine to promote your blog organically.

For most blogs, in order to leave a comment you have to fill out your name, email and website. The website section is what your name will be linked to.

Start by finding popular blog posts focused on similar topics as yours. Then, go into the comments section and leave a genuine comment about the piece. You could even reply to someone else’s comment. In the website space, enter the URL for your blog post instead of your home page. Keep in mind that this strategy works best if you take the time to leave real comments. Just writing “great article” isn’t going to cut it. You goal is to get people to stop and look at your comment, and hopefully feel enticed to click through to your website.

16. Use Forums

When you’re looking for places to learn how to promote your blog, you should think about the platforms that encourage conversation. There’s no better place online for that than forums.

Try to find forums related to your industry. Here are some good Google searches you can use to find these forums. Just replace “keyword” with your industry or niche:

• inurl:forum.*.com “Keyword”
• forum+Keyword
• intext:”Keyword”forum
• Keyword “powered by phpbb”
• Keyword “powered by vbulletin”
• Keyword “powered by smf”
• Keyword “powered by phpbb”
• Keyword “powered by vbulletin”
• Keyword “powered by smf”

Once you’ve found an active forum, create an account. This is the part where most businesses mess up. They just go into the forums and start posting links to their sites. This is a good way to get your account banned.

Instead, you’re going to use your signature to promote your site. Your forum signature is the section that appears below every post you make.

Some forums will allow you to post a link in your signature, which is where you’re going to promote your blog post’s newest article. All you have to do is come up with a sentence/headline to entice people to click through. For instance, if you wrote an article about how to choose a roof for your home, your signature might say something along the lines of:

“Thinking of buying a new roof for your home? Check out my guide that walks you through the entire process! yourlink.com.”

Then start posting in different threads and contribute to conversations. The more helpful and valuable your posts are, the more likely people will be to click the link in your signature. You can update the link in your signature as often as you like on most forums.

17. Use Q&A Sites

Does your blog post answer a question or provide a solution to a problem? If so, then using Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers and Quora to promote your blog can be very effective. Start by creating an account on either site. Yahoo Answers tends to have more general questions, while Quora typically requires more in depth answers.

Next, search for questions that your blog post can answer. Once you find one, write out a sincere answer to the question and link to your blog post as a resource for additional information. Don’t just give a one word answer and link to your post. The more effort you put into your answers, the better results you’ll get.

Also, become a regular contributor on Q&A sites to build your credibility and authority. Many of these sites highlight top contributors which can give your blog even more exposure.

18. Share Your Post With Someone Who Has an Opposing View

If you want to know how to promote your blog, sparking a little controversy in your content can certainly help. However, w’re not recommending to turn your website into a gossip blog. If you’ve written a piece of content that goes against the grain or offers a different view than another popular post, you can email the other blogger and let them know.

A great example of controversial blogging in action is when Mark Schaefer published an article debating the sustainability of content marketing. Because content marketing has been one of the most popular marketing tactics in recent years, the post sparked a lot of interest. To date, the post has nearly 400 comments and over 4,500 social media shares.

19. Add a Link in Your Most Popular Posts

An overlooked tactic on how to promote your blog posts is through your existing content. If you’ve published a new article that’s related to a popular article you’ve published in the past, add a link to the new article inside the older one. Not only will this get more traffic to your new post, but internal linking is also beneficial for SEO.

You can find the posts on your site that have received the most visits by logging into your Google Analytics account under Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

20. Ask Readers to Share

Simply asking your readers to share your content can immediately get more eyes on your site. One study found that websites with Twitter share buttons were mentioned seven times more on Twitter than those without them.

It doesn’t stop at your site either. When you share content on social media, ask people to share it with their audience as well. Tweets that specifically ask for a Retweet get four times more Retweets.

Take these three steps to encourage your readers how to promote your blog for you:

1. Add social media share buttons in each post.
2. Ask people to share your posts when you promote them on social media.
3. Ask readers to share the post at the end of your articles.

21. Share With Your Email List

This last idea might seem fairly obvious. But there are a lot of businesses that don’t send emails to their subscribers when they publish a new post because they feel it’s too promotional or they assume their email subscribers are already aware of their new content.

Depending on how often you publish new blog posts, you can send an email out each time you have a new article, or do a weekly newsletter that contains all your latest posts from the previous week.

Don’t Just Create, Promote

Taking the time to promote your content is crucial if you want to succeed with blogging. Many experts recommend spending more time promoting your content than you do creating it, which shouldn’t be a problem with the 21 techniques you just learned.

Ensuring your promotional behaviors is essential, which is why you’ll want to use a social media publishing tool to keep articles spaced out and shared at right time.

If you found these tips helpful, share them with your network. And leave a comment to let us know what your favorite way to promote your blog posts is!

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